Indus Valley Times

New Delhi,Mar 11 : Harish Salve, counsel for the State Bank of India, today said the bank has no problem giving details of the buyers and sellers of the electoral bonds as long as they don’t have to be linked to each other.

“We have no problem,” said Salve, when Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Chandrachud asked what the reason for the delay was.

Salve said SBI is willing to give “the detail of purchase, name of the purchaser and the denominations”.

Salve said the delay was on account of trying to match the purchasers and the redeemers of the bonds.

“If we don’t have to create a bridge between the two, then, within three [more] weeks, we can give everything,” Salve offered.

At this, the court asked why SBI needs three weeks for it, given that both are already available [to the court].

To this, Chandrachud pointed out that the court had not asked for the connection. It had only asked for separate details of the two parties.

“just open up the envelopes and submit the information,” suggested the bench today.

At this, Salve said it will also be difficult to give details of who has purchased (created) which bond.

The Court then specifically asked if SBI can give details of who purchased how much worth of bonds.

Salve said transaction numbers of each purchase transaction cannot be easily disclosed.

The court also asked why the Assistant General Manager filed the application.

Salve said the relatively lower ranking official filed the application since he’s the man in charge of keeping the accounts.

The court also expressed its consternation at SBI not mentioning what it had been doing for the past 26 days when it asked for more time.

-PTI